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Saturday Sips

When I received Olivia’s request to do another tea segment for Global, I was clad only in undies, dangling a tuna carcass over the side of a boat off the shores of Key West. I had managed to attract 4 to 5 large sharks who were making coy, teeth glaring attacks at my GoPro, which was underwater beside the bloodying tuna. It was a fantastic spectacle to witness indeed.

Without too much thought, I replied to the email and said I was free on the 14th of Jan. I was sipping my cardamom chai on the deck of the boat and feeling somewhat blown away – it was 11 am, 31 C, I was being entertained by sharks & tarpon, my hotel room was a floating cabin cruiser and I had been, just an hour earlier, snorkelling beside a 120 year old shipwreck. So I offered up Yerba Mate as a topic for Saturday Sips on that day 2 weeks into the future. Olivia agreed and said it was a perfect idea.

The 7.12 min segment went really well – no jammed ice shakers, no lids flying off & spraying the hosts and no big loud gulps with nothing to say. I had with me 3 of my Yerba mates – all of which are for sale on our site. I wrote a blog post in 2009 on my love of yerba mate and how it was making me feel. You can read the article here for more info on this liquid vegetable.

Most of Central America drink yerba. It is a national pastime and phenom. Most drink it plain, which is quite rough looking & tasting. It’s definitely an acquired taste. I only started drinking yerba after stumbling upon a key factor in its likability – smoke dried vs sun dried. I’d only ever had smoke dried and would, from time to time choke back a mug or 2 simply because I knew it was good for me, not to mention the somewhat euphoric buzz it provides. The yerba we carry is indeed sun dried. Its also aged for smoothness, and organically culivated as well. I have not found many yerba’s as silky as this one.

When I first started concocting tea recipes, chai blends occupied the bulk of my testing and sampling. I was in love with those 5 aromatic spices and would play with the ratios for months, tweaking my chai so that it had all elements I figured would captivate the North American palate. Ginger, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, and black pepper are Ayurvedic – a Hindu based philosophy of complete body wellness based on balancing entire bodily systems. Mix these fresh ground spices with sun dried yerba and you get a morning wake-me-up that not only nourishes the body, but gives your immune system a true friend to rely on when a virus invades.

I’ve come to realize over the years that quite a few tea drinkers just don’t like the chai spice combination. It’s simply too much of a stretch for their palates to wrap around – my dear mom is one of them. That’s ok – I get it. I dont like Cilantro – it makes me gag. Not sure why, but when I come across it in food that I don’t expect to see it in, my stomach recoils like a startled horseshoe crab. So with this in mind, I set out to create another yerba that was based on something completely different. We choose citrus, and are we glad we did. This TG version of the sun-dried yerba has been the one tea in our line up of great teas that has converted more morning coffee drinkers over the past 10 years then any other tea we sell. If you are aware that the day is quickly approaching where you will need to ween yourself off that muddy morning jolt, then Citrus blast is the tea that will allow for a smooth transition… and lord knows, we all crave for smooth transitions these days.

We hope you enjoy the yerba you have just received and if you find yourself with a few minutes to spare over a steaming mug of our tea, kindly leave us a review on our website.